Can a kind word change your life? I know from experience that it can. More than three decades ago, during the summer vacation at the end of my first year at university, I received a handwritten letter ...

"Genius Still Unrecognised" - The Worst Poet in the World William McGonagall's poems are something else. The jarring meter, the banal imagery, the awkward rhymes: they made him a laughing stock in ...

Johnny Echols, lead guitarist for the 1960s rock band Love, is a fount of stories. In a podcast interview with superstar producer Rick Rubin a few years ago, he talked about happy accidents in the ...

My weekly column in the Financial Times on Saturdays, explaining the economic ideas around us every day. This column was inspired by my book and began in 2005.

This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday. Robert Propst is more than an inventor: he is a visionary, an innovator dreaming up how to ...

In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan, aimed at giving the company a jolt of creative renewal. They would sweep away corner offices and cubicles and r… ...

Economists love to tell each other stories about perverse incentives. The “cobra effect” is a favourite. It describes an attempt by the British Raj to rid Delhi of its cobras by paying a bounty for ...

Pepsi twice ended up in court after promotions went disastrously wrong. Other big companies have fallen into the same trap – promising customers rewards so generous that to fulfil the promise might… ...

As artificial intelligence becomes ever more capable, is any job secure? “I’ve sort of convinced myself that the safest job in the world is probably gardener,” the FT’s chief economics commentator ...

Why did audience members fail to flee a deadly fire… despite being told to escape? Flames are spreading through a Cincinnati hotel. The staff know it, the fire department is coming, and the people … ...